Pierce Co. man charged with causing accident while talking on cellphone; Prescott’s ‘longest bratwurst’ claim challenged; more briefs

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A western Wisconsin man is due in court Nov. 8 after he was accused of causing a fatal traffic crash while chatting on a cellphone

Thomas Geistfeld, 65, of Prescott was charged last week in St. Croix County with negligent homicide and second-degree reckless homicide.

Authorities said he was trying to pass a truck that was pulling a trailer when his vehicle fishtailed on a wet road and hit an oncoming car. The driver of that car, Dawn Anderson, 37, of New Richmond, was killed. The crash happened in late September of last year on County Road I in the town of Joseph.

A reconstruction team found that Geistfeld was driving from 73 mph to 94 mph in a 55 mph zone. Officials said Geistfeld threw down his cellphone to try to get his vehicle back under control.

State lawmakers have occasionally talked about banning cellphone use behind the wheel, but a statewide bill has never been introduced, although some communities ban the practice. Wisconsin did ban drivers from writing and reading text messages in 2010.

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Prescott’s ‘longest bratwurst’ claim challenged

Who made the world’s longest bratwurst? There’s a dispute over that question in northwest Wisconsin.

Last Saturday, Ptacek’s IGA in Prescott cooked up a sausage just over 52-feet long, and the owners arranged to break the World Record Academy’s mark of 47 feet set a year ago by a restaurant in Chicago.

The event had lots of media coverage. But reporters soon began hearing from folks at Dallas in Barron County. They’ve cooked a brat over twice as long for the past four years with little media publicity and no effort to register it as a world record.

Last Saturday, a 135-foot brat was cooked and served at the Dallas Oktoberfest – the same day as the Prescott event.

Ann Lee said she looked into registering the Dallas brat as a world record, but it cost too much.

Pat Ptacek wasn’t happy at having to pay $1,900 to register his brat with the World Record Academy, but he felt the accomplishment needed to be recorded so he paid.

Also, the folks in Dallas don’t use a bun. Ptacek understood that the record brat would need a bun so he arranged to have one made.

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Tonight’s debate: Pressure is on for both Ryan and Biden

There’s a lot at stake for Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan tonight when he debates Vice President Joe Biden.

Pundits say the Republican congressman from Janesville will be under a lot of pressure to continue the gains made by Mitt Romney after his debate with President Obama last week. Biden will be under similar pressure to improve the Democrats’ momentum.

University of Chicago political scientist Will Howell said it will be interesting to see how Ryan works around his policy differences with Romney on issues like Medicare reform. Howell said Romney showed a more moderate side in his debate with the president, and Ryan’s politics and conservative ideology don’t line up as well.

California professor and former Democratic campaign worker Sam Popkin said it’s supposed to be a debate of surrogates, but both Biden and Ryan are too proud to fall into those roles.

Still, he said Biden must find a way to attack Romney. Popkin said that if the vice president goes after Ryan, the Republicans win.

Both domestic and foreign policy subjects will be discussed in tonight’s debate, which starts at 8 p.m. from Centre College in Danville, Ky.

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Parent union seizes $45,000 from chapters that defected

The state government’s largest employee union has seized up to $45,000 held by five of its former local chapters that broke off to start their own union.

It appears that the locals will wage a civil court battle to try to get the money back.

The locals called police after the Wisconsin State Employees Union withdrew the funds. But Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg said it appeared that no criminal laws were broken. He called it a union matter that’s best settled in civil court.

Five chapters which represent state correctional officers recently decided to pull out of the State Employees Union and start their own group. They said they were upset with the way their parent union responded to the state law which eliminated most collective bargaining, and the Walker recall election that followed.

Both the state union and the locals say they have a claim to the groups’ money. The state union withdrew the money from accounts it had access to, and it took other funds from a bank deposit box.

Craig Hull, one of the local presidents for the new prison union, said he learned about the withdrawals when he tried to open a new bank account last week.

State Employees Union chief Marty Beil said the money is now in five separate trust accounts to make sure the funds are not misused.

But the locals say Beil is just trying to set up a situation in which the locals would have to crawl back to his group someday. They say two previous appeals court decisions back up their contention that the disputed union funds belong to them.

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Minnesota man accused of killing father, son in photography store

A Minnesota man has been charged in the killings of a La Crosse man and his son at their photography store last month.

Jeffry Lepsch, 39, of Dakota, Minn., was stopped as he drove away from his home Tuesday afternoon. He surrendered without incident after a warrant was issued charging him with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide.

Lepsch is due in court in Winona today on a request to extradite him to Wisconsin to face charges in the deaths of 56-year-old Paul Petras and his 19-year-old son AJ. They were shot Sept. 15 at May’s Photo in downtown La Crosse.

A criminal complaint was not immediately available. La Crosse Police plan to say more at a news conference today.

Winona County authorities searched the suspect’s car and house. They said they found important evidence but would not say if the murder weapon turned up.

The La Crosse Tribune said Lepsch spent a year in jail after he pleaded no contest to stealing thousands of dollars in merchandise from an Ace Hardware distribution center where he worked in La Crosse. He was arrested for that in 2003.

Petras’ widow Sherri told the Tribune she never heard of Lepsch.

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Poll: Romney won debate but not Wisconsin citizens’ votes

Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly believe that Mitt Romney won last week’s debate, but they still plan to give President Obama the state’s 10 electoral votes.

That’s according to the latest poll released by Quinnipiac University, CBS News and the New York Times.

It shows that Obama’s lead was cut from six points to three in Wisconsin since mid-September, but the president’s 50% to 47% edge is just outside of the poll’s 2.7% margin of error.

Almost two-thirds of the 1,300-plus likely voters in the Quinnipiac poll said the Republican Romney won his debate with Obama last week.

And 49% believe that Janesville’s Paul Ryan will win his vice-presidential debate tonight, while 32% believe incumbent Joe Biden will win.

Forty-four percent of Wisconsinites believe the economy is the top issue. Health care is a distant second at 16%.

Wisconsin still has a huge gender gap in the race. Women prefer Obama 53% to 43%, while men endorse Romney 51% to 46%. Romney also has a slight two-point edge among independent voters.

A majority of Wisconsinites polled said Obama would do better than Romney on health care, preserving Medicare, and helping the middle class, while Romney gets the edge on handling the budget deficit.

The Quinnipiac poll is looking at the swing states of Wisconsin, Virginia and Colorado. Romney has a one-point lead in Colorado, while the president is up by five in Virginia.

More voters than last month said that Romney cares about their needs and problems, but Obama still leads in that category. The poll was taken from last Thursday through Tuesday.

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Expert says don’t expect much success in wolf hunt

Wisconsin’s first-ever wolf hunt begins in four days, and at least one expert says nobody realizes how hard it will be to actually shoot one.

Grey wolves are said to be mobile, crafty animals with the keenest sense of smell, and Montana hunting guide Bud Martin told the Associated Press, “I’ll bet you a steak dinner your quota won’t be met.”

Wisconsin originally set a quota of 201 wolves, but Chippewa Indians will protect 85 under their treaty rights so the actual quota is just 116.

The Department of Natural Resources issued 1,160 permits in a lottery.

Mark Dahms of Waukesha, who got one of the permits, said he’ll use an electronic calling device that can make 400 sounds that imitate wolves and distressed animals.

But his odds of success could be astounding. In Montana, almost 19,000 hunters took just 166 wolves last year.

Wisconsin hunters will be further hampered because they won’t be able to use hunting dogs until at least Dec. 20 when a judge will consider the DNR’s request to drop an injunction against the dogs. It stemmed from a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.

In neighboring Minnesota, a lawsuit to throw out the state’s entire wolf season was rejected yesterday, and Gopher State’s wolf hunt begins Nov. 3.

Wisconsin’s hunt runs from Monday through the end of February. The hunt is meant to reduce farmers’ crop and livestock damage caused by the state’s grey wolves.

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Sexual assault with live snake conviction upheld

A state appeals court has upheld the conviction of an Eau Claire area man who sexually assaulted a woman with a live snake.

John Bullock of Altoona tried to convince the Third District Court of Appeals in Wausau that there was not enough evidence to find him guilty of first-degree sexual assault.

But the judges said a nurse had found bruises on the victim, and the jury had the right to decide what to believe from the evidence presented.

Bullock and Damonta Jones of Eau Claire were both convicted of sexual assault last year. According to prosecutors, Jones hosted a gathering in 2010 when she held the victim down and Bullock molested her. The victim then reportedly heard somebody say something about a snake, and she then felt a sharp pain.

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Whoops: Library sends overdue notices to 15,000 patrons

About 15,000 Waukesha County residents were told by mistake that they have library materials overdue, and officials blame a computer snafu.

The mistake happened late Tuesday night when staff members from the county’s Federated Library System were testing a new library catalog system. It includes email notifications when borrowers are late in returning books and other items.

Director Tom Hennen said the process was supposed to get an internal test run, and the 15,000 emails were not meant to be sent out but they were.

Those who had materials out as of Aug. 8 received the notices. Hennen says those people are now being notified that the overdue notices were all a mistake. He urged people to double-check their library accounts to make sure everything’s accurate.

By the way, Hennen said he received one of those false notices himself.

Tags: state news, wisconsin, politics